Many vehicles are equipped with autonomous and/or semi-autonomous driving systems, applications, and/or features. Autonomous and semi-autonomous driving systems may provide automated driving controls that reduce the driver action required for operating the vehicle. Automated lane centering methods, features, and applications, for example, may be activated by the driver while the vehicle is in motion and may maintain the vehicle position in the center of a lane. Adaptive lane centering systems, may maintain a constant lane offset, or vehicle position relative to a lane on the road the vehicle is driving upon. Adaptive lane centering systems may reduce driver fatigue and increase safety by maintaining the vehicle position with respect to the road with reduced driver input.
Safety considerations may be taken into account when designing a vehicle lane centering system or other autonomous driving systems. In order to conform to safety requirements, an adaptive lane centering application may be overridden by the driver at any time. When the driver overrides the vehicle lane centering system, the system relinquishes full steering control of the vehicle to the driver. Many autonomous or semi-autonomous steering control override detection systems and methods, however, may not be reliable and may not accurately detect a vehicle steering override condition. Many vehicle automated steering systems may be less reliable at high and low speeds. For example, at low speed a steering wheel requires higher levels of torque to maneuver, and an autonomous steering feature may falsely interpret a slight steering wheel movement to be a steering override event. At high speed, a vehicle steering system may, for example, be too sensitive and have a high steering override threshold. As a result, a driver may over-steer in order to gain control of the vehicle, and the vehicle steering system override detection system may lag behind the steering wheel input causing a sudden movement or jerk in the steering wheel.